As young Sartre said to young Descartes: I know you are, but what am I?

Armed insurrections? | The Salt Lake Tribune

John724

— The last time I checked, the Constitution was comprised of more than the Bill of Rights.Thus, congressional war powers include the authority to “suppress insurrections” Art. I, Section 8, Clause 15; see also Clause 16 for a better understanding of what a well-regulated militia means …Executive use of these powers has also been deemed constitutional since 1795, when President Washington mustered a national militia to march and fight against the leaders of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. So, chalk one up for tyranny, I guess, if some of the more strident voices on this forum are to be believed…In the political philosophy of the day 18th-c., revolt against tyranny was understood to be a natural right. As such, it can neither be granted nor revoked by any system of government.Claiming it to be a constitutional right e.g., one presumably granted by the Second Amendment… therefore rests on a fundamental category mistake, for which there is absolutely no warrant in the text of the Constitution itself.Keeping the provenance of these rights distinct should also help to mitigate the obvious amounts of confusion around this issue; viz. as if in logic or in law there could ever be such a thing as a constitutional right to take up arms against the authority of the federal government that the Constitution itself has established… Hint: there cant…Since the Founders understood the peoples right to revolt to be a natural right, it is finally not specifically bound to the enumerated rights in the Second Amendment, either. — This is a good thing, in my view, since it allows revolts against tyranny to exhaust innumerable non-violent paths –: via elections, impeachments, nullification proceedings, or whatever –, before the thought of ever taking up arms should even begin to arise.My concern is that far too many Americans these days seem overly prone to a media-induced state of hysteria, in which a 1% tax increase or a government program that is not to my liking is deemed to be a sufficient condition to shout Tyranny!…, or only figuratively?…: Lock and load!…The violence of such rhetoric itself may eventually lead some unstable souls to believe or: to imagine… that there are no other options left to them.And that would not only be a dangerous illusion. — It would be an evil slander against the state of the American republic and the continuing viability of its constitut